Kino's Journey - Land of the Lost
by H. S. Leary
Summary: For the first time in a long time, Kino encounters a country that is truly terrifying- a country of horrors that she never could have expected.
1. Chapter 1: The Land of the Lost

"Was this place on the map?..." Kino wondered.

"I don't think so," Said Hermes.

Kino and Hermes approached the massive cobblestone wall. There was no one there- no customs office, no guards. Nobody to check papers… nothing. Just a rotten wooden door on corroded iron hinges attached to a cobblestone wall that continued as far as the eye could see.

"Kino…." The motorrad Hermes said. "I don't know if this is a good idea. This looks sketchy."

"Don't worry, Hermes," the traveler responded. "We'll see what lies inside."

After some effort, Kino was able to pull open the door- it creaked as if it had been closed for years. She saw only darkness on the inside.

"Kino…" Hermes said, but Kino ignored him and turned on his headlight as she walked him into the darkness.

It was a corridor. The floor, walls and ceiling were made of the same cobblestone that the wall was made of. After an uncomfortably long time, the traveler arrived at the end of the corridor. There was a bright light, quite unlike the darkness that had enveloped her and the motorrad. Kino saw a remarkable scene: a green field, expanding out into the horizon, seeming infinite. The sun was on the horizon, but she wasn't sure if it was rising or setting. The sky was tinged ochre.

Kino looked around, looking for a sign of life. After all, nobody would wall off a place where nobody lived, right?...

Her eyes landed on a silhouette far away that looked like it could be a town. "Kino… really. I feel like we should get out of here," Hermes said, but she ignored him, proceeding to ride towards the town with him.

The town was decrepit, just like the door outside. It was nothing but a collection of huts connected by unpaved paths, leading to some sort of totem pole in the center. The traveler saw one resident: a man, of advanced age, sitting on his lonesome in the center of the town. She got off the motorrad and walked towards him.

"Excuse me…" she said, and the old man looked up. "I don't understand this place. First, there's a long corridor, then endless fields, then nothing but this old, ruined town… what's the story with this place? Are you the only one living here?"

The old man sat and stared at Kino. After a long while, he said, "this place is wrong. This place should not have been. Don't stay here. You don't want to know what happened here."

After a moment of surprise, Kino asked "Why are you still here, then?"

The old man said nothing. He slowly stood up. He fixed the traveler with his gaze. He said firmly, "You shouldn't be here. Go."

He was unnerving Kino. She stood there, matching his gaze, feeling awkward.

The old man sighed and looked down in exasperation. "I'm sorry. It's too late for you now," and sat down. He started to fade away. Kino stared in confused awe as he became more and more transparent until he was no longer there.

"….We really should leave, Kino," Hermes whispered.

Before Kino could respond, a strange ghostly sound came from behind her. It was like... laughter? But also like howling in pain? Or maybe it was a whisper, or a cry…

Kino turned around in the direction of the unnamable sound, but saw nothing. Just the same plain field, unchanged. The sun was still on the horizon, neither rising nor setting. A single bead of sweat broke out on Kino's forehead. The same exact inscrutable sound, the voice yet not-voice, came from behind her, from the town. She whipped around again, and saw that the town was even more dilapidated than before. It was as if the huts had all aged instantaneously- The wood was rotten, and some of the roofs were falling in. The dirt paths were now grown over. The totem pole in the center had collapsed.

Kino could do nothing but stare in shock. Impossible.

"K-K-Kino…" Hermes whispered."We… should really, really go. Really, really go."

"…Y-yes," Kino muttered, still staring in shock. She got on Hermes and drove as fast as possible along the wall.

Kino missed the door as she sped past. She backed up, but the door was no longer there. The door was, in fact, much farther behind than she thought she saw. Kino again mounted Hermes and sped towards the door, but it was gone when she arrived. The door was, in fact, much farther up along the wall. Nervous and scared, she drove as fast as possible up to the door, but when she got there, it was gone. It appeared to be far behind them.

Kino took off her cap and goggles, throwing them on the ground. She was sweating, her eyes wide with fear and confusion. Nothing made sense. Reality had been broken. She looked around, and then regretted it. The ground rippled like water, and then ruptured, spewing the screams of unnamable creatures. Patches of grass erupted in fire, then grew into huge distorted trees that decayed as they grew, and fell. Shadows were cast on the ground of things that were not there. Elsewhere, buildings and surreal sculptures conjured themselves into existence and crumbled, or burned, or faded. And the sun hung there. The setting/rising sun remained blasphemously still.

Kino collapsed to her knees.

"Kino! Don't pass out! We'll be sitting toads!" Hermes cried. Before she could correct him, Kino passed out.


	2. Chapter 2: The Humanoid

Hours later, Kino awoke. At least, it felt like it was hours. The static sun made it impossible to tell time.

This was bad. This was unfathomably bad. Kino stood up and touched the wall. _It seems like the door isn't really an option_, she thought. _But maybe this wall_… She took out a knife and jammed it into one of the cracks between the wall's stones. She wiggled it, trying to disrupt the mortar.

The mortar was old and frail, and it was chiseled away easily. As an experiment, Kino went on to chisel away at the rest of the mortar surrounding the stone- if she could take care of this, maybe she could eventually make a decently-sized hole? Or maybe that endeavor would be too much to handle. It was all she could figure out for the moment.

She stood there, stoically, methodically, rhythmically chiseling. Again, she heard the same ghastly sound as before; the laughter/howl/cry. She decided to ignore it. But this time, she couldn't. It was loud, and long; suffusing her entire field of hearing. She dropped the knife and turned around, and saw a city.

Kino gasped. It was a great metropolis, sprawling for miles. It was bustling, cars and bicycles everywhere. This was impossible. But then she blinked, and when she opened her eyes, the city was dying. It was ablaze. There were people in the streets screaming and running for their lives. Everything was on fire, as if it had been extensively bombed.

And then the buildings began melting. Their solid forms dissolving, dripping down to the ground like a candle that had been burning for far too long. The people, too- their bodies were falling apart, dripping down, disappearing. Kino was repulsed, but somehow could not look away.

Then, the hellscape of a city froze. Everything stopped, as if it were a photograph. A lone figure walked out from the center of the city, slowly, towards the traveler. Its footsteps were far too loud for something of its stature. It was a child, or some approximation of a human child. It walked up right in front of Kino. It was about a third her height. Its eyes were much too large for its face, and its toothless grin spread literally from ear to ear. Its head trumped the rest of its body in size, and its arms were withered. There was nothing about this creature that was right or made sense. It wore nothing but a blue robe and a necklace of thorns.

"The device," It said in a voice that sounded like the bottom of a sewage pipe, "The device will laugh. The lie will become truth." Kino could only stare.

It continued. "When we reach that point, the lines will intersect and the circles converge. You must try. There can be no escape from the labyrinth of lost veracity. The underground voices will chant in harmony with the dissonant-"

The child-thing was interrupted by a persuader bullet to the chest.

It collapsed, and Kino stood over it holding her smoking persuader, her hand shaking.

"Why, Kino!?" Hermes cried. "It was just a little boy! I, uh, I think. Maybe? I'm not really sure."

"That was not a child," Kino replied. "That was not a human. That was a monster. Nothing here is as it should be. This place is wrong, and that thing was wrong, too." She looked up at the city, which was now reforming itself in heinous shapes that looked nothing like a city should.

"Stop it!" She yelled. "Whatever you are, stop it! This is insane!"

Underneath her, the grass started growing at an alarming rate. It became a pile of bramble and weeds growing around her, and she stepped out of the way just before the pile of thorns could have consumed her.

The child-thing spoke again. "You are the first… and the last…" It coughed up blood. "Can you be free? Can you cease to be?" Then it was silent.


	3. Chapter 3: The Solution

Even after all her journeys, after all her hardships, all the times her nerves and courage were tested, the traveler Kino stayed stoic and solid. Now, she was scared. Reality was broken.

She stared at the dead humanoid monstrosity lying at her feet. As she stared, it began to crumble into black dust. As it crumbled, a thick mass of thorny vines sprouted over the remains, almost like a burial. She still held the smoking persuader.

"If this world makes no sense," She said, "I will _make_ it make sense."

Suddenly, a roar came from everywhere. From everywhere around her, an eldritch shriek suffused the air. It was the laughter/howl/whisper, with increased ferocity, sounding like it was from another world, a world that follows different rules from ours. The wail filled Kino's ears, but she used all her will and ignored it.

She holstered her persuader.

As quickly as possible, she drew it.

And holstered it again.

A terrible wind arose.

"Kiiiiiino! What are you doing?! Let's go!" Hermes yelled, but the wind took his words away.

Kino drew her persuader again, aiming right in front of her. Quickly, she holstered it. She drew it again, then put it back. Just like she does each day, practicing for when she needs to be fast on the draw.

The wind began to die down. The ghastly voice fell in volume.

Kino drew one more time, and fired. She fired repeatedly into the nightmare city as it shifted, and kept firing as a forest of black thorns grew in its place and died seconds later. She kept her eyes fixed in front of her- but not on the city. It was as if she was shooting for the sake of shooting. She kept firing until she ran out of bullets, then drew the persuader she keeps on her back and continued. The sound died. The air became still. As this happened did this, Kino took a subtle glance behind her.

The door was there. The rotten wooden door was directly behind her. She immediately stopped firing, mounted Hermes, and drove for the door at top speed.


	4. Chapter 4: Past and Present

The door burst open as Kino and Hermes crashed through it. Landing ungracefully, the two fell over into a clearing.

"So, you escaped," A voice coming from the surrounding trees said. Kino took out her persuader.

A man walked out from the shadows of the trees. "The rust. The rot. The cracked stones, the frozen sun. The eldritch sounds, from some other world," he continued. The man was young- he couldn't have been much older than Kino, though his hair was pure white. He was dressed in beige. "The beautiful world, the inscrutable world, the unfathomable world. You saw it all. How did you escape?"

Kino lowered the persuader, seeing that this stranger was harmless. "I made it make sense. I did something familiar to me that I knew and had known for a long time. I focused and drew my mind away from the bad craziness. I focused on what I knew was real and true. I was able to see through the madness and conquer it."

The stranger nodded. "Yes. I see. Well, that's certainly one way to do it. By the by, my name is Tertias."

"Three? Your name is three?" Hermes said.

Tertias ignored Hermes. "Tell me, did you see anyone in there?"

"Yes," Kino responded. "We saw an old man-" "He was scary!" Hermes interjected. Kino nudged his gas tank, and continued, "We also saw a child. It was a… frightening child, to say the least."

"So. That's what happened to them…" Tertias suddenly looked morose. He slumped against a tree and looked at the ground

"Did you know them?" Kino asked.

"Yes," Tertias said as he looked up. "We were a rare case of identical triplets."

"But you all look nothing like each other. And you're all different ages!" Hermes exclaimed.

"I don't fully remember why or how it happened," Tertias said, "But something happened to that place that made it all wrong. All I remember is that somehow my brothers and I were the only survivors of the incident. And I was the only one who escaped, as the land transformed behind me into something terrible. I looked back and saw that things were changing. The landscape was distorted. What was once a magnificent metropolis started to crumble, then reconstruct itself seconds later. It crumbled again, weeds and rot and rust covering all… I couldn't bear to look at it, and I ran from the gate. My brothers were still in there, and I somehow knew that they would be trapped forever."

Tertias got up and walked towards Kino. He put a hand on her shoulder. "I cannot thank you enough, traveler. So long have I wondered what their fate was and what the land's fate was." He hugged her, which made Kino feel extremely awkward. "Uh. Thanks?" She responded.

Tertias began to walk away. Before he vanished into the shade of the forest, Kino called out, "Excuse me, Tertias, but…" There was an awkward pause.

He turned around and said "Yes?"

"The child," Kino started. "I killed him."

"Now that's just rude!" Hermes said, and Kino nudged him again.

"Well." Tertias said. "They are lost. Everything there is lost. I don't know if I can even call them my brothers anymore. But I still miss them. I think." He took out a persuader of his own and aimed it at Kino.

"I still have deep scars from that terrible day. I do not know if I love or hate my brothers. And I do not know if I want to thank you or hate you. But go. Go now, before I make up my mind to kill you."

There was silence in that clearing. Tertias stared at Kino. He was sweating and gritting his teeth. Kino stared back, showing no emotion.

Without any words, Kino got on Hermes and drove away down the forest path.


	5. Epilogue: Tertias

Tertias still stood holding the persuader, after the traveler left.

Eventually, he lowered the persuader and sat down in the middle of the clearing.

"So." He said to himself.

"So. That's what happened." Tertias looked up into the sky, which had faded into a starry night.

"The world…" he said to himself, "The world is incredible. It is beautiful. It is ugly. Terror and tragedy abound. But we find wonder. We found terror and wonder in abundance, didn't we, my brothers."

He looked down again. "Can we ever be forgiven for what we did? I doubt it. The entire country is lost due to us. They're all gone. It's another world in there now. Was it worth it?" He toyed with the persuader in his hand. "But at least I think I know now, dear brothers," Tertias whispered. "I think I understand."

From far away, Kino heard a gunshot.


End file.
